Shattered
by Blue Zombie
Summary: Sheldon falls apart, and Penny picks up the pieces.
1. Chapter 1

There was a knock at the door and Penny looked at her watch. 9 A.M. She was sitting bleary eyed on the couch, her robe wrapped around her, the steaming cup of coffee in her hand. She could feel the warmth from the cup on the palm of her hand. The knock came again. She knew it wasn't Sheldon or Leonard, they knew enough not to disturb her before 11. Sighing, she placed the coffee mug on the table in front of her, stood up and adjusted her robe, and went to the door.

Howard was standing there, and there was a look on his face she had never seen there before. He usually had a half joking, half leering expression on his face and in his eyes. She had never seen him so serious. She swallowed, knowing that the serious look was bad, real bad, and she braced herself for whatever it was he was going to say.

"Penny," he said, and his voice was like gravel, something in it scraped raw.

"Yeah?" she said, looking at Howard Wollowitz in fear.

"Penny, there was a terrible accident at work, at Leonard's lab-"

"Is Leonard okay?" she said, cutting him off, suddenly certain by the look in his eyes and the sound of his voice that Leonard wasn't okay. She couldn't breathe right, she needed Howard to say that Leonard was okay, or that he would be okay.

"He died, Penny, Leonard's dead,"

His words weren't registering yet. She was staring at him and hearing what he said, hearing it again in her head, just a pale echo of his words, 'Leonard's dead,' but it wouldn't make sense. She felt that there would be some meaning to those words in a few minutes, hours, or days. If enough time could pass those words would begin to make some semblance of sense. Right now they meant nothing. Right now she felt nothing.

"What...how?"

She was too stunned to invite him in, it didn't even occur to her to move from the doorway, to uncross her arms, to sit on the couch and pick up her coffee cup again.

"It was an experiment, the laser, I don't know exactly..."

She was numb, bad news, irrevocable news made her numb. But as she watched Howard she saw his lip tremble, saw the tears well up in his eyes, heard the gravel of his voice thicken until he was unintelligible. She shook her head, looked down at her hardwood floor, and then back at Howard's wet face, and something about the way he was looking off to the side made her want to cry. She opened her arms to him, and he fell into them.

In the shower, the steam billowing around her, the warm water working on her muscles, she heard Howard's words again. 'Leonard's dead,' Dead. How could this be? How could it? She had called work, said she couldn't go in today, all week. Leonard. She thought of his awkward way of speaking to her, his sincere, awkward way he had. She thought of how smart he was, how the intelligence burned in his eyes, how the things he said were sometimes so beyond her, but he never made her feel stupid.

Getting dressed slowly, going through the motions, waiting for the news to hit her full throttle, waiting for it to slam into her, knocking the wind from her. It was trickling in, bits of it like raindrops or paper turned to ash, fleeting images floating by, nothing she could hold onto or know fully. Leonard. How could Leonard be dead? She had had chinese food with him last night. She had leaned her head toward him and laughed over a joke he told. Chinese food and jokes and bits of laughter all meant that someone couldn't be dead.

As she brushed her wet hair, darker blond when it was wet, she suddenly thought of Sheldon. Did Sheldon know? He must know. They worked at the same university. Howard knew. Why didn't Sheldon tell her? How was he? She felt the water in her hair making her shirt damp. She didn't care. She only had the strength to shower and get dressed. Her hair would dry however it did and be all fly away pieces of straw blond, and she'd look like she did when she was a kid. She didn't care.

Sheldon. She knew that Leonard and Sheldon were more than roommates and friends, in a strange way. She knew how much Sheldon depended on Leonard. He drove him to work and everywhere. He went with him to doctor appointments and haircut appointments and he anchored him. He dealt with his quirks and leveled Sheldon out. She couldn't count the number of times Leonard had calmed Sheldon down or explained some aspect of the social world to him. She couldn't count the number of times he's had to tell him to relax when his OCD behavior got the better of him. What would Sheldon do without him?


	2. Chapter 2

She knocked softly at Leonard and Sheldon's door, and then she felt the first of the blows, the first of the kicks to the stomach. It was just Sheldon's apartment now.

It had to have been Howard who told her to come in, because Howard and Raj were sitting on the couch. There was no one else in the room. They both looked like they had been crying, but they weren't crying now. Penny knew she was still far from tears. There were only the very beginnings of cracks in her numbness.

She looked beyond them into the small kitchen, it was empty. She looked toward the window and the eraser boards with the bizarre equations on them. No one was there. She walked over to one of the boards, not sure if it was Sheldon's or Leonard's. There were symbols on these boards that meant nothing to her. There were numbers, and there were letters she was familiar with from high school algebra like X and Y, but there were symbols and probably Greek letters that meant nothing, and she could never understand how they seemed to interweave into these numbers. She shook her head. Looking at these boards was like looking into Leonard's mind. Was it all that was left?

She felt the numbness wanting to crack, a crack as big as the San Andreas fault. She could imagine the numbness falling off of her like huge chunks of ice, like chunks of the glaciers floating away into the sea. She felt this wall of tears suddenly behind her eyes, and she knew she was in danger of being overcome by it. She grasped around in her mind, groped toward something to save her from feeling this, to save her from dissolving away into nothingness. Sheldon. If she could focus on Sheldon than she wouldn't have to think about herself.

"Where's Sheldon?" she said, her words drifting over their heads. Raj looked at her with his stunned eyes and open mouth, unable to respond. Howard turned toward her, his eyes bloodshot and red rimmed, the tip of his nose rubbed raw.

"He's, he's in his room,"

Penny marched toward his room. There was a rule that she knew of, one of the myriad of rules that Sheldon had set up around himself, and one of them was that no one could be in his bedroom. But she had been in there before.

She knocked three times and said his name, and repeated that pattern, unconsciously mimicking his way of knocking. She felt a lump in her throat and swallowed around it. She leaned her head against Sheldon's bedroom door and whispered his name.

"Go away," he said, and his voice sounded muffled. She imagined he was speaking through his pillow.

"Sheldon, it's me," she said, and she wasn't thinking of Leonard and his being gone, and she wasn't thinking of how she would never have Chinese food with him again, and she wasn't thinking of how she would never see him push his glasses up his nose, and she'd never see him shrink inside of those sweatshirt hoodies he liked to wear. She was thinking of Sheldon.

"I'm coming in," she said after getting no response. She pushed on his door and it opened. He was sitting on his made bed, fully dressed, wearing the black collar shirt under his superman T-shirt. He was hugging his pillow.

"Sheldon," she said, reaching toward him but he pulled away.

He stared straight ahead toward the blank wall, and she sat down on the bed next to him. She licked her lips, hugged herself. She knew Sheldon's father was dead, but she didn't know any details, didn't know when he had died or how, didn't know how Sheldon had reacted. But this was worse. She knew that. Sheldon had gone away to college at 11, had been away from his family for years when his father died. His father's death wouldn't have effected his daily routines.

Sheldon was very good at shutting everyone out in the best of times, but now, she sensed the wall of silence that was around him, like her numbness. Was he protected in the silence just as she was in her numbness? He stared straight ahead, expressionless, his blue eyes looking almost vacant. Where was he? She knew she had to reach him, she had to bring him out of that shell if anyone was going to be saved, her or him or both of them. They were both unanchored, she knew it.


End file.
